D parsing

[Chad Joan]

On Wednesday, 6 November 2013 at 08:19:13 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
wrote:
> On 2013-11-05 17:55, Philippe Sigaud wrote:
>
>> Walter is far from convinced that AST manipulation is a good 
>> thing. You
>> would have to convince him first. His fear is that it will 
>> lead to
>> unreadable code, and everyone using her own personnal version 
>> of D.
>> AFAICT, nothing of the sort happened in Lisp (I mean, Lispers 
>> have
>> balkanization, but *not* due to AST manipulation).
>
> You know, Walter did a talk about AST macros at the first D 
> conference. The idea back then was to add AST macros, hence the 
> "macro" keyword.

Also, IIRC, it is believed that string mixins with CTFE are 
potentially more powerful.  I am under the assumption that Walter 
is taking the long view and waiting for the community to furnish 
their own powerful AST manipulation tools using the existing 
spec.  I suspect that he is opposed to baking AST manipulation 
into the /language spec/, but is perfectly accepting of the 
notion of using AST manipulation to generate code, reduce 
boilerplate, implement exotic features and DSLs, and so on.  Just 
don't complicate the core language any more than it already is.  
Sorry if I misrepresented you Walter; I can only make educated 
guesses ;)